Armstrong440

Just remember the old adage... Whoever bids the most at an auction, has usually paid too much. That being said, I have in the past bought a LOT of stuff from a certain auction house whose name makes it sound as though they should be based on the Isle of Wight. They are a specialist toy auctioneer, and their catalogue descriptions are usually quite comprehensive and very accurate: their lots are obviously assessed by someone who knows their business. Every lot I've bought has been sight unseen, based purely on the online catalogue and a single photo, and I have never been disappointed or felt let down by the descriptions. Usually they sell locos, for example, in lots of three or four, only one of which I will want for myself. The rest have been moved on via a well-known auction website. Wagons are usually sold in lots of 15, 20 or 25 at a go, and most of those will also be resold as my modelling interests are quite focused. Their packaging department is outstanding, with every item individually wrapped, and I well remember taking delivery of a four-foot-long scratchbuilt model of Cutty Sark, complete with glass display case, which arrived perfectly intact. I still have bin bags full of poly chips and bubblewrap. Over the years I've acquired quite a lot of stuff for myself and more than recouped my costs. Just remember the hammer price isn't the end of the story. There's the commission, VAT on the commission, and (for me) delivery costs to be added in too. And bear in mind that their assessments of models are purely cosmetic: they don't test-run locos, so be especially wary of anything that's kitbuilt. But be sensible, keep your wits about you, and know the true value of what you're bidding for and there's fun to be had and bargains to be found. - Steve -

Does anyone have any recent information on ABS? An order a couple of years back went without reply (and my cheque was never cashed) and I've heard nothing about Adrian or his business recently. Is he still extant?

I have looked into 3D printing and at the moment, to my mind, the technology is lacking. It's possible to get good prints with a lot of wrangling, mainly concerned with getting the model at the right angle in relation to the printing head to prevent ridges on the visible surfaces and allow fine detail, particularly thin linear features, to form properly. But the surface finish is still very variable from one print to the next, there seem to be issues about how some of the plastics take paint, and the plastic seems to be subject to long-term shrinkage and/or sagging. In time these issues will be settled, and I'm guessing that within a few years 3D printing will be a viable means of producing models commercially. But to me the inherent flexibility and "friendliness" of a kit wins hands down against a one-piece moulding. Lots of people enjoy the actual process of building a kit. Kits can include spare pieces for different variations - leaving the builder with parts (s)he can use elsewhere. The plastic is easily manipulated - cut, sanded, filed, glued, and modified with strip and rod and sheet. Of course some people will prefer a one-piece model they can buy, paint and put on a layout: it's horses for courses. But plastic kits still have a long and healthy life ahead of them. Given that, I do feel that a plastic kit is a viable option even for an obscure prototype. It won't make much money for the manufacturer, but it WILL recover its costs and make money in time. How many Provender Wagon kits have Coopercraft sold over the years, given that only twelve prototypes were ever built - and six of them were slightly different to the CC version! And even the CC wooden Minks were fairly uncommon creatures. A quality kit of an interesting and "different" prototype will sell to the modeller who wants that particular vehicle, but I'll wager that most of its sales will be to little Johnny who sees it on the shelf and says "I haven't got one of those yet, Dad." Incidentally, the AA3 kit I was proposing earlier was hardly an "obscure" prototype, with 840 being built.

Hello again Mikkel. You have missed a couple of pictures of plated wagons, most notably in Atkins the TOTEMs on p.79 / 81 / 83 and the ballast hopper on p.310. Also the tank wagon on p.504 is painted white as its service livery, not photographic grey. Lettering is in red, so would the plates (which are painted with a white background) be highlighted in red as well? Note that its solebars are painted body colour, not chassis colour, whereas the drinking water tank wagon on page 244 has its solebars painted underframe colour. This may be due to the first vehicle being painted for Class A products though, but if the drinking water tank has its solebars painted chassis colour, might this not be taken as a guide for other wagons and colours? The ballast wagon on page 315 was photographed in 1888 and is thus in red livery. The underframe - including iron solebars - is most definitely darker and almost certainly black. This is a shame, as I personally prefer the look of your wagons with the solebars in body colour. As an aside, the ballast wagon also carries the central white stripe which, I thought, was supposed to denote either-side brakes (as does the coal wagon on page 234.) Having thought a little longer on the subject of cast plates, do we actually know that they were painted grey at all? If a wagon is dirty then it's going to be hard to tell from a photo, but the 4-plankers on page 54 (both nice and clean fresh out of the workshops and presumably in red livery) seem to be carrying plates which are distinctly darker than the body colour. Perhaps the plates were black. The more modern plate illustrated on page 66 certainly seems to be painted black, so was there a changeover at some time from grey plates to black, or were they perhaps painted black from the outset? Numbers need to be plainly visible, and white numbers on a black background are going to be the most visible combination, regardless of body colour. One fly in the ointment is the 4-planker on page 276 which, being photographed in 1894, should be painted red. It seems to have plates which are distinctly lighter than the body, which itself seems to be very dark indeed.

Hello Mikkel. An excellent article on a topic very close to my heart. I have one point to make, and one question to ask... Firstly, as others have mentioned, I really don't like the look of the red wagon with grey plates. The cast plates were painted body colour on grey wagons, so are there any grounds to assume they weren't painted body colour on red wagons? And then, just to throw another spanner in the works... If 1904 is to be taken as the changeover date from red to grey livery (which is a very reasonable conclusion to reach) then in the case of "transitional" liveries where wagons carry cast plates but are painted with the 25" "GW", is there any evidence or suggestion that the large "GW" was ever applied to a red wagon? Were all the wagons painted with transitional liveries new builds, and hence grey, or were wagons ever taken out of traffic (and might therefore have been red) for the new-fangled lettering to be applied?

Have only just happened across this thread. I'm an active eBayer, both as a buyer and a seller, and yes: some bizarre things happen there. I haven't read the whole thread (!!!) and don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but a month or so ago someone was selling a Mainline Toad that had been modified into a Permanent Way vehicle. All this involved was filling in the verandah with planked plastikard, fabricating part of a door frame, and relettering. The job could have been done without even a repaint of the original model. It was done reasonably well, but could have taken no more than an evening, plus allowances for paint-drying time. Selling price: £33 My gob has rarely been so smacked. I noticed the chap had another example, almost identical, up for sale. So I watched it. Selling price: £55 My gob has never been so smacked in its life. I have finally found a use for those three redundant Mainline Toads in my spares box!

The combined and expanded edition (mine's the 1998 edition and it's just been reprinted) has a very similar extract from the same photo at Didcot provender yard as reproduced by MikeOxon above, although Atkins' is smaller and grainier. It would seem that the right-hand wagon is from the earlier lot, as it clearly has a lever brake and no diagonal strapping. These earlier wagons were slightly different from the Coopercraft model, with an 11'6" wheelbase. But hey (pun intended)... if I shave off the diagonals then who's going to measure the wheelbase as the train rattles past? But yes: there were only twelve of these wagons in total so it's little surprise that they were camera-shy.

I hear what people say, and it pretty much coincides with what I have concluded on my own. However, if this is not a viable prospect, then what (if any) is the future for the plastic kit field? Are any and all "obscure" prototypes destined to remain in the realm of whitemetal and brass? Are all manufacturers going to fight shy of new releases in case the RTR industry or a nerd with a computer and a 3D printer pull the rug out from under their feet? I'm wondering how many Siphons Coopercraft are expecting to sell...

I'm not sure that would help very much. Even if I got firm commitments for, say, 200 models (which I think is optimistic), that's still a long way from break-even. Personally, I don't mind if the kit takes several years to pay off the mould costs - which is how long it probably WOULD take! As I say, I'm not in this to make a profit, just to do something useful which MIGHT form the basis of a future business.

Miss Prism and Mr Ball are basically echoing the voice that I have in the back of my own head. But if I may explain some of the reasoning behind my proposed project... A plastic wagon kit is not an intrinsically difficult thing to put together, but to do it well requires a little skill and patience. And that will satisfy most modellers most of the time. But some people require a little bit more, be they EM or P4 modellers, or just OO modellers who want to stretch themselves a little. And to move beyond the current range of plastic kits requires graduating to new media - whitemetal or etched brass - which in turn require new skill sets. A modeller might only reluctantly want to learn these skills because they have to in order to progress, or they might not want to learn them at all - in which case they simply don't progress. A halfway house between the two is taking a plastic kit and hacking it about to fit compensation units and/or sprung buffers and couplings - something that I myself do a lot and which is often detailed in various "how to" books and articles. I would just like to see kits on the market that make this hacking either easier or unnecessary. A plastic kit that can not only be built by a beginner with little more than a knife and a bottle of solvent, but which has crisper detail and thinner sides than a cast kit, better relief than an etched kit, and a level of detail and a variety of options to cater to the more particular modeller: something, as I say, that a P4 modeller could build "as is" and be happy with the result. Basically what I was proposing was to try and take on the whitemetal and brass brigade with a simpler, cheaper, easier alternative. The £20 I mentioned was the all-up development and production cost for a 500-model run. This left no profit for myself: that would come with the 501st model sold. The RTR manufacturers are unlikely ever to incorporate compensation and alternative parts: the big question is whether or not the market is large enough for me to sell 501 of my fancy dancy kits.

The AA3 was just my own pet project, with AA1 and AA6 in the wings if the first kit was well received. I am still considering an open wagon, perhaps a pre-diagram 1- or 2-planker, which would have the same basic refinements plus a reasonable representation of the brake rigging including alternative parts, full interior detail and full interior depth (!) and lower production costs because the sides could be duplicated instead of the Toad's mirror image ones. But would people be prepared to pay £15 for a plastic kit of a basic wagon, no matter how many bells and whistles it incorporated?

Yup. I wasn't really looking to make a profit - I'm not a trader - but recouping costs IS useful! I just think the plastic kit market has been pretty stale for the past 20 years and it's time some new refinements appeared.

I recently investigated commissioning a kit to build a 4mm AA3 with lots of refinements to raise it above the level of current Coopercraft / Parkside fare. Included would have been alternative axleboxes, alternative buffers, provision for planked or sheeted sides, separate handrails, and built-in compensation. All of this was done in plastic as I wanted a kit that would be within the capabilities of the average builder - someone who is scared of brass and soldering irons - but which would also appeal to the finescale brigade. So not only could a 10-year-old make a decent fist of it, but a P4 modeller could effectively build it out of the box and plonk it straight on his layout. I was discouraged by the moulder I was consulting, because the price of the kit would have been at least £20 including wheels and bearings. I feel that such a kit would justify that price, but I doubt it would sell in sufficient numbers to recoup costs.